All Encompassing Space

We live in an expanse of endless space. Hundreds of times each day we inhale into the endless expanse of our inner being, but have you wondered where does that inner space begin and end? How deep and wide are those valleys and plateaus of the heart and soul?

We have an idea of where the space within the lungs ends and begins, but our brains simplify the situation as if they are two pink balloons just inflating and deflating – when in reality it’s a complex network of tissues and airways that are incredibly elastic and absorbant, but mostly “solid” in a visual sense like that of a sponge.

And science tells us even at the surface boundary between the tissue and the airway, that at the micro scale, the smooth tissue appears jagged and undulating with even more micro crevices and caves.

At the quantum scale, even that terrain is reduced to infinitesimal atoms made of another quantum scale tiny combinations of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which are themselves comprised of quarks, which are again and again comprised of more quantum-micro packets of energy and light surrounded by exponentially greater space and electromagnetic forces that hold the world together. Or so, “they” say.

But where truly is the boundary between anything within our body and our experience, between the surface of our skin, the shine of our eyes, and the next aspect of the world with which it is in contact?

For instance, I’m sitting in my living room, in aural and visual contact with the space around me, the traffic outside, the walls and ceiling and floor and windows. Beyond that, I sense the neighborhood and now the city of Phoenix and the desert and Arizona. My focus softening and widening, I slowly see the entire western USA and north America, and the western hemisphere.

Still softening and widening my inner gaze, now I sense the entire earth, and the moon and the inner planets and the sun, and Jupiter and Saturn, the solar system and the ort cloud, and then after millions of light years of travel, finally the Milky Way comes into view.

Still there is more space, and deeper galaxies with their own micro-quantum realities, and even galactic clusters, and supernovas, black holes, and quasars. The human mind has mapped this all out, and our brains have the ability to understand and remember certain things about this reality and then we believe it to be absolutely true.

Science is now telling us that the entire mapped universe known to date seems to replicate a neuron network in the human brain. The human mind has mapped this all out, and our brains have the ability to understand and remember certain things about this reality and then we believe it to be absolutely true.

And yet here we are, right now, in contact with this all encompassing space, and we don’t even take the time to explore all the possibilities beyond our own sense of self. As humans we tend to limit our perspective of the world first to that which we can hear. Beyond that, to what we can see, then to what we have experienced (heard/seen in the past), and then to whatever we’re willing to believe.

We absorb unconscious knowledge about the world from books about a far away country or maps and photos of the moon and cosmos, or a belief system about other realms of spirit and soul, or family mentors or news sources that are adamant and convincing about certain topics and aspects of life. And the parts we like best, we choose to believe, and that becomes our truth.

So even with a seemingly expansive view of the world, attentive to the finest details of our deeply held opinions all the way up to a well understood cosmology of the ultimate power, the truth we “know.” Our truth is only as good as we are able to remember the things we’ve seen, heard, and done, and the depth with which we remain aware to the direct surroundings in the all encompassing space around us now.

When it comes down to truth, the fields of quantum physics, molecular biology, and neuroscience have opened up entirely new realms of possibility in which the discoveries and findings of current research is calling into question every established theory of scientific truth.

Isn’t everything “known” just something people tried several times and got the same result? So what do we do with new information from things people have never done before, and which is pointing towards things we’ve always believe now being proven false

There are commonly held expectations such as the legal ‘standard of care’, which in fields like architecture and construction relate to a certain quality and accuracy in the design and construction. However, in fields like history, geology, paleontology, egyptology, psychology, archaeology, quantum physics, and neuroscience, the ‘standard of care’ is something entirely different.

In subjective fields of science and humanities, the “standard of care” can be loosely defined as keeping the crazies, the fools, and the phonies out of trade journals, publications, and other bodies of knowlege that essentially define the fields of study – a.k.a. “the Truth”.

While this is an important service to the world, it has also been known to discredit or otherwise neglect important discoveries and hypotheses that fall outside of typical mainstream scientific theories about the ancient past, deep space, inner psychosomatics, or quantum physical reality.

The point of all this complexity, is to highlight the subjectivity of what we believe is truth. Byron Katie says that a key to happiness is always questioning our beliefs, and never taking what we feel or believe at face value. Comfort is a primary obstacle to growth, and questioning our core beliefs is an incredibly uncomfortable situation with powerful potential to unlock new upgrades in your self awareness and understanding.

If it feels good to believe something, and feels bad or believe something else – regardless of the evidence presented in showing all signs pointing to the inconvenient uncomfortable truth, it is still quite likely that many people will choose to believe what feels good even after being shown clearly that it is untrue, and even potentially harmful.

So this share is a latticework of possibility that I hope will expand the sense of spaciousness and wonder that you carry with you in the world. Seamwalker aspires to be a space for pioneering thinkers, leaders, doers, activists, allies, and experts in life, love, and labor to co-mingle their avant garde intuitions about where we’re headed together in this life, and how we best get there.

We welcome divergent viewpoints, direct engagement from deeply opposing views, and critical feedback of any assumption or statement that is based on a cliche or “common-knowledge” and otherwise substantively left out of the discussion. Here, we agree there is truth in these beliefs and statement however they are intended, and we also see the endless space of possibility surrounding each potential known and unknown situation.

We can fall deeper in love with the sense of what can become of this, become of us, become of this all encompassing space we are always in contact with in every moment. And with this love of the spaciousness for a diversity of ideas and opinions, we weave a new commons of humanity and wean our obsessions with the parts of life that are always seeing separation and difference as an opportunity to one up, put down, or set straight some “other” situation in our experience.

So the goal of Seamwalker is to be that all encompassing space, the open loom awaiting weaving threads of our reflected experience into the space of possibilities. May each view and each contributor always acknowledge the partiality of our own views, and the golden truth within each share or experience outside of our selves.

Crazy Wisdom

"Yeshe Tsogyal says, 'Space and the awareness of Space, this is the basic message."
~DharmaOcean morning chant~

"All Encompassing Space" is the refuge name I was given by Reggie Ray when I took the Refuge Vow into the Dharmaocean lineage of the Kagyu practicing lineage of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. This lineage follows the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and is known as the "Crazy Wisdom" lineage, in the spirit of the radical awakened state of Trungpa Rinpoche and his teachers.

Yeshe Tsogyal, also known as "Victorious Ocean of Wisdom" is was a foundational female buddha and master teacher in the Tibetan buddhist traditions, living in the 8th century C.E. The opening quotation to this post is a daily morning chant in the dharmaocean lineage during the Dathun month-long winter meditation intensive in Crestone, CO, where I took refuge in January 2016.